Acting
by Bainidhe Dubh
Summary: After a near-death experience, Kagome decides that she doesn't want to be helpless anymore. However, how can she train in the modern world when the ones training her need training themselves?
1. Chapter 0: Prologue

**Acting**

**Bainidhe Dub**

**0: Prologue**

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**0.1 [ Sengoku Jidai ]**

Her hands reached up to touch the ones clasped around her throat, clawed desperately at the grip. She felt the hands tighten; felt her throat begin to close and watched the world gray around the edges and her vision blur. Her legs kicked aimlessly, occasionally striking the legs of the one who held her.

"KAGOME!" The sharp cry, filled with pain and fear reached her ears.

Kagome struggled harder. With each kick or wriggle, the hands tightened more. She felt her lungs burn with the need for oxygen. Desperately, she once again clawed at the hands encircling her neck.

A bright flash, yellow like lightning rendered her nearly blind and a sharp gust of wind buffeted into her. A splash of something warm and wet soaked her but nothing harmed her that she could feel. Kagome heard her attacker cry out in pain as the wind made dozens of tiny cuts in his skin and then split his head neatly in half, horizontally. She felt the earth quiver and rend itself into claw marks stretching away from her.

She turned to see Inuyasha staring wide-eyed at her.

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**0.12 (Interlude)**

His wide eyes stare in a mixture of shock and something she cannot describe, something she has never seen before. His hands tremble at his sides, his ears quiver from the stress of whatever emotion lurks in his eyes.

She smiles faintly at him but the smile isn't real- she feels no cause for smiling, nor anything at all. The world seems tinged with black, and she lets herself fall into an inky, sticky darkness.

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**0.2 [Modern Era]**

"Kagome, wake up!"

Kagome rolled over and opened her eyes to see her younger brother, Souta, worriedly staring down at her. His earnest expression and trembling eyes clued her in on the seriousness of her condition.

"SHE COULD HAVE **DIED**!" Her grandfather's voice echoed to her.

"YOU ACT AS THOUGH I DIDN'T KNOW!" Another voices roared.

_'Is that... Inuyasha?'_ She wondered. _'COULD it be Inuyasha? It doesn't SEEM so absurd! Ugh, doesn't seem absurd?! What am I thinking?!'_

"DEMON!"

"IDIOT!"

"YOU COULD HAVE **KILLED** HER!"

Kagome lay still and felt an awful silence, a horrible stillness, come over them all. It seemed as though she could hear Inuyasha's low, deep breaths as he struggled to get a grip on his temper.

"_I_ could have killed her?" Inuyasha's voice finally came, thick with an emotion Kagome had never seen in him before. She could feel the shock of rage, rolling off of him in waves. His youki was beginning to become a powerful aura, an aura that sent his emotions crashing into the humans around him. Raw anger, grief, terror- all of it fresh, all of it crashing into her like waves on the shore.

To say the least, it hurt like hell.

"Inu...ya...sha," she managed to croak out, her throat badly in need of water and her wounds in need of changed bandages.

Souta stared down at her, apparently overjoyed to see that she was awake and, indeed, on the road to getting better. He ran out of her room and down the hall.

A moment later, the sound of Souta shouting that 'Kagome's awake' filled her ears. Footsteps thundered towards her room. Inuyasha came sliding in, and Ojii-san entered soon after the dog demon.

Inuyasha stopped before her bed and looked down at her.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled.

_'WHAT? Inuyasha is APOLOGIZING?'_

It was horridly out of character.

"For what?" Kagome replied, reaching out to make him help her stand.

"For letting you into danger. For using a move with the possibility of killing you. For not bringing you back sooner."


	2. Chapter 1: The Thing About Foam

You should thank Catch 22 (the band, not the book or movie), Reel Big Fish and Squirrel Nut Zippers. 

Since it's been so long since I thought about this story, I figured anybody reading it deserved a long, funny chapter. Trust me, it's only going to get funnier from here.

And if certain details confuse you, know this: this story explains itself. It may take a while, the story may circle 'round to strange topics, but this story will eventually explain itself.

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1: **The Thing About Foam**

[…]I'm -sticky-[…]

— Bart of _Xenogears _in Mooncalf's fic Happy New Year ()

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1.1

The thing about trees is that they have branches. The thing about branches is that they move. Another thing about branches is that when they move, they make rustling sounds. The thing about rustling sounds is that they give away your location. And the thing about _that_ doesn't even need saying— especially when you hunt something Inuyasha protects.

And that, Kouga decided, explained why he found himself extremely damp and desperately clinging to a tree branch hoping that it wouldn't make too much noise. After yet another bout of very circumspect struggling, Kouga managed to clamber atop the branch again.

Inuyasha and Kagome strolled into the clearing, unaware that Kouga lurked above them, his shoulders hunched and his arms stretched out in a classic threatening gesture.

"So, wench, what did you want to 'talk' about?" Inuyasha drawled as he continued walking to the center of the clearing.

Kouga bristled silently. How _dare_ Inukuro speak to Kagome as though she were some idiot to humored and dismiss on whims? The wolf demon foamed at the mouth and muttered silently to himself about Inuyasha's disrespect of another male's woman, conveniently forgetting that he had taken Kagome on as his mate only because he'd found her useful— and he'd barely known her name.

Some of Kouga's foam dripped onto the tree branch. He wiped it up quickly; using his kilt and hoping none had already dripped to the ground.

"Inuyasha… ever since I let that demon capture me," Kagome paused, apparently thinking on how best to phrase her next sentence. She paused for a long time.

The wolf demon rather wanted her to get on with it. He wondered idly which demon she had in mind. 

After her lengthy pause, she spoke. "I've only thought about how weak I was."

Inuyasha made a scoffing sound. "You're not weak." He shrugged. "Everyone makes mistakes, is all."

Kouga's jaw dropped and more foam dripped onto the tree. 

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Shit. 

Hastily, he crammed his lower jaw and upper jaw back together, forming a shape similar to a closed mouth. He again began wiping at the semi-solid saliva with his kilt, only to run out of dry scraps of cloth before he got it all. 

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Shit! Shit! 

He ran a hand through his hair, then started mopping at the froth on the bark with the long silken strands. He made a slight sound when some of his beautiful hair ripped.

"Inuyasha, I want you to teach me to fight."

He felt his eyebrows lift, forming a wrinkled ridge on his forehead, and then his lower jaw dropped, causing his eyes to appear bugged and his eyebrows to shoot straight off his head.

Yet more froth from his mouth dripped onto the branch. This time, Kouga didn't even bother to try to wipe it up.

"Wha-wha-what?" Inuyasha managed to stammer, his face bearing an expression eerily similar to Kouga's.

Kagome watched Inuyasha's startled eyebrows drift to the ground. She eyeballed them and lifted an eyebrow of her own.

Had Kouga been a biophysicist, he would have felt privileged to observe such an interesting phenomenon as what occurred next. 

Kagome, through stress, somehow managed to alter the scenery behind her into a dazzling collection of sparkles, bubbles and solid colors. Even more interestingly, she loomed above the scenery and close observation of her face revealed a terrifying expression involving huge (but narrowed) blank eyes, fangs and several cross-shaped veins popping out of her forehead.

She waved her arms. Inuyasha and Kouga cringed.

"WHAT! IS IT SO HARD TO BELIEVE THAT I WANT TO GET STRONGER!"

Kouga recovered quickly. He reattached his jaws, smoothed his somewhat ripped hair, managed to hide the globs of froth on his clothing and schooled his expression into a look of smooth reassurance.

He circled around through the other trees so that he stood just behind Inuyasha. And then, he jumped.

****

1.2

Kagome gazed on in shock as a brown and black blur zoomed down from the trees. Had she not been spending so much time in the Sengoku Jidai, and spending it with Inuyasha, she would have completely missed what happened next. It all happened in a blur, but she managed to make it out.

Kouga extended his foot to step lightly on Inuyasha's head, and in a tiny movement almost as fast as Kouga, Inuyasha side stepped to the right and hooked his left leg. Unfortunately, the wolf demon had extended his left leg in a position that would now cause his foot to land directly _on_ Inuyasha's left shoulder. The rivals realized this a little too late. Actually, they realized it a lot too late. As in, so "too late" that it was too late to even think on the matter further. With a snap, Kouga's foot connected. Inuyasha, who had been mostly unprepared for the weight, went bowling over. 

Kouga's right leg, which I have neglected to mention (sorry, sorry) had been pulled up. His right knee slammed into the backside of Inuyasha's right shoulder at the exact moment Inuyasha began to teeter. Inuyasha made a gasping sound.

The weight on Inuyasha's back, which had been shifting him to the left, now shifted mostly to the right. This weight, added to the force with which Kouga's knee had slammed the muscles controlling his shoulder, sent him bowling over to the right. 

Inuyasha tried to go down on his right but to avoid breaking his hooked left leg, Inuyasha turned the action into a pivot. They would have gone down with Inuyasha lying on his back and a majorly squished Kouga pinned beneath Inuyasha, but Kouga wanted to go left and wound up tangling them soon after he went flipping over Inuyasha's shoulders.

The end result (Kagome observed this appreciatively) found Kouga on his back with his legs loosely wrapped around Inuyasha's waist and Inuyasha doing a rather uncomfortable-looking spread-kneed split above the full demon.

"Gonna _kill_ you," Inuyasha growled. Except Kouga's hair was in his mouth, so that Inuyasha's words came out like "grma krf yrf."

"Your fault," Kouga grumbled back. "Now get _off_ of me!"

At this point, the two noticed something other than the positions of their legs and all-important waists. They noticed the positions of their hands.

Inuyasha seemed to be almost straddling Kouga and the position of his hands (spread out by Kouga's head) and knees (spread out along Kouga's waist) made it official. Kouga had somehow managed to tangle his own arms in the slits in Inuyasha's sleeves.

Worse, the foam Kouga's mouth had produced when he'd gotten angry proved sticky. Very sticky. And Inuyasha's fine silver hair had tangled into Kouga's black hair. And the foam which Kouga's hair had absorbed when he was wiping it off the tree acted like a very powerful paste. Like pitch, but white.

"Gohmr hrlf mr," Inuyasha said through the hair in his mouth.

Unfortunately for them both, Kagome couldn't help them, being otherwise occupied. As in, laughing. Very hard. So hard, in fact, that she was crying.

And then Kouga remembered that he'd wiped at the froth with his kilt. _Oh no_. As he'd expected, Inuyasha's billowy hakama was stuck to his kilt. 

Kouga felt a huge glob of sweat form beside his head.

And then things went downhill in a way that would have made Murphy proud that nature upheld his law so wonderfully. In other words, Miroku walked into the clearing.

Kouga stretched his neck —painful for Inuyasha and just as painful for the wolf demon— to see Miroku's eyes bug. The monk's lips pursed, then parted, and finally his jaw dropped and his eyebrows flew right off his head. 

Unnoticed by the humans and demon (and half-demon), Miroku's eyebrows joined Inuyasha's and Kouga's eyebrows on the ground and they all began to dance the freed eyebrow dance together.

"Kouga! I thought— I thought— I thought—" and here Miroku gave up for a moment, partly due to the displeased expressions on the warriors' faces. He paused, took a deep breath, and said, "IthoughtyoulovedKagomeifyoudidthenwhyareyouandInuyashalikethat?!"

Then an idea occurred to Miroku. Kouga could see it on the monk's face. He could see it in that sly expression that spread across the entirety of the human's visage.

Kouga and Inuyasha watched helplessly as Miroku sidled up to Kagome. They stared at the evil smirk that had come across the monk's face.

"Well," Miroku drawled, "I guess Kagome made her choice."

Kagome went red with embarrassment. Inuyasha went red with rage. Kouga went red, as well with rage. 

Miroku looked innocent. "What? Why would Kagome cry so before the two of you but for the pain of choosing between you, and then to find that she now has no one to choose from?"

"Shrf lrfing yuidjirt," Inuyasha spat. Well, tried to spit.

"Indeed! She _is_ laughing!" Kouga said. "And you _are_ an idiot, monk!"

Miroku ignored this. He bent down to help Kagome up. Except his hands didn't go to her arms or shoulders. He apparently had more interesting curves in mind.

"PERVERT!" Kagome cried at the exact same time Inuyasha cried "drft fujjer" ("don't touch her") and attempted to get up. Kouga, bristling at Miroku's audacity yelped in pain several times when Inuyasha tried to rip them apart. Inuyasha yelped too.

Miroku's eyes bugged again and soon he joined Kagome on the forest floor, tears streaming from his eyes as he laughed. While locked in that epic struggle, Kouga and Inuyasha had resembled dogs fighting and those yelping sounds, so much like the sounds dogs made when injured, hadn't helped matters.

Kouga and Inuyasha gave up on removing themselves from that position. It would be too painful. It would end with them partly or mostly undressed and rip most of their hair out. No, best just to stay like this for a little longer.

"Gohmr, girt gahayday," Inuyasha mumbled. 

"Kagome, get Gah-eh-day," Kouga interpreted. "Who- or what- ever Gah-eh-day is."

Kagome's laughter had by this time mostly stopped, but her eyes remained watery and a huge smile lingered on her face. "You mean Kaede. Miroku, go get her."

"Why do _I_ have to go?" Miroku asked smoothly.

Kagome looked at him, returning to the dangerous form that had scared Inuyasha and Kouga.

"Going," Miroku said meekly. "She's scary when she's angry!"

Inuyasha and Kouga agreed.

****

1.25 (interlude)

Upon seeing the youkai and hanyou, Kaede laughed until she cried. Gasping, she stopped and sighed.

She moved closer and poked the unfortunate warriors. After doing so, she stroked her chin and made thinking sounds.

"I'm afraid there is little _I_ can do. The mouth foam of a wolf or dog demon is a powerful epoxy; I have heard that demons use the foam from wolf demons instead of pitch to hold their boats together."

"So, they're stuck together? Forever?"

"You'll have to ask Miyouga about that."

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Kouga: I hate you, Bain.

Bain: Hate is love not return`ed. Except for I love you.

Inuyasha: I hate you too.

Kagome: *laughing*

Miroku: *laughing*

Inuyasha and Kouga: I AM NOT GAY!


	3. Chapter 2: To the Future

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2: To The Future 

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Train, train take me away

Take me away, far away.

To the future we will go

Where we'll land, nobody knows!

—Selphie Tilmett from _Final Fantasy Eight_ (Squaresoft Enix USA)

2.0 [Sengoku Jidai, Two Weeks Later]

"FUCKING WIMP!" Inuyasha shouted as he rushed toward Kouga, Tetsusaiga drawn.

"PIECE OF DOG SHIT!" Kouga replied, bracing himself for impact.

"Ah, trading _subtle_ insults, I see," Miroku commented in his usual insanely calm voice. Miroku's voice didn't belong on a battlefield, or anywhere near Inuyasha or Kouga.

The rivals crashed together, rebounded, and tried to crash together again. 

"SIT!"

Inuyasha thudded to the ground. "BITCH!"

Kouga, unfortunately, had created a good deal of forward momentum for himself. Even though suddenly the target which Kouga had been propelling himself toward had suddenly fallen into a pit in the ground, Kouga still had to move forward. Unfortunately, 'forward' meant over his target (Inuyasha) and into a tree. As a rule when people run into trees, they injure themselves. Even more unfortunately for Kouga, his biophysics followed the rules a little more stringently than absolutely necessary.

"Ow," Kouga mumbled. 

"I HATE YOU WIMPY WOLF!" Inuyasha shouted.

"SIT!"

"OW! BITCH!"

Now we must leave these characters for a little while. No, we aren't going far; just about five hundred years or so and no distance— see, not far. Yes, yes, I promise we'll visit them again soon, and for longer. Not to worry, Kouga is fine (a minor concussion and a broken nose) he'll be healed by the time we get back.

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2.1 [Modern Era]

Just outside Kagome's house, a young man anxiously pushed a button. This button was connected to the door bell and wasn't used very often. People for some reason preferred knocking on the door, which neither the door nor the doorbell were very happy with.

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DING-DONG, said the overjoyed doorbell. _DING-DONG!_

And then Houjo proceeded to teach the doorbell through experience why the doorbell should be grateful nobody used it. Houjo (rather impressively, considering his species: human) managed to press the doorbell six more times in the next second.

"I'M COMING!" Somebody shouted. An old man, from the sound of it.

Meekly, Houjo ceased his assault on the doorbell. The doorbell sighed a grateful little sigh, not that Houjo or anybody but the door and various inanimate objects heard it.

"Oh, Houjo," said Kagome's grandfather. "What are you doing here?"

"Is Kagome around?" Houjo asked hopefully.

Kagome's grandfather paused. If he told Houjo that some illness had befallen Kagome, she would pound him into the ground upon her return. If he said no, Houjo would ask where she was. The poor old man very well could not say "five hundred years in the past" or even "eight paragraphs up, not mentioned by name" as Houjo would think him crazy. He continued to think.

"I'm really not sure. She could be any number of places," Kagome's grandfather said.

"But you live with her!" Houjo protested.

"She may have gone off in the woods to die, like a wild animal. She's been frothing at the mouth a lot lately. Okay, so the dying part is a lie but the frothing part is true. She DID tell me not to tell anybody where she is."

Houjo blinked. "Kagome may have rabies?"

"It's curable, I assure you," the old man said smoothly. "And she's gone to have that problem fixed. Really that's all I can say."

Kagome's grandfather tended to confuse names, and when Kagome had come home covered in froth two weeks ago, she had muttered something about a demon and biting, but she'd never said who had actually done the frothing. She seemed rather embarrassed about the strange red marks on her nose. This had left her grandfather to assume that her demon had bitten her, she had gotten rabies and had frothed all over.

So what he'd told Houjo had been sort of true— just hyper edited and completely wrong.

Houjo went away, looking dejected. 

The old man retreated back into the house, slamming the door and cackling. Kagome couldn't beat him into a pulp for this one! She couldn't even look scary!

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2.2

There's this thing about time travel: for mortals, who travel FORWARDS through time and enjoy that, it causes a whole lot of questions that make their heads nearly explode. Unfortunately for you, that's exactly what we're going to do now (go back into the past). And I am about to make your heads explode.

So, to make your heads explode. The entire grandfather paradox has an addendum. This addendum I cannot list in order, as absolutely refuses to travel in a truly linear manner. I can only list it in the order of thought. But here's the addendum: _go back in time--- kill your grandfather---are not born---do not kill your grandfather---are born (lather, rinse, repeat for all eternity)_. Now **that** is a hell of a paradox. Any mortal looks at that line and thinks "how the hell does **that** work?"

Ah, look. We're through the well already. And see? The explosion of your head isn't so bad, is it? At least you don't have a headache. And now, in the past, to shuffle over to some (in this fic) rather unimportant characters. After this, they will be in the background, so if you like them, then enjoy them while you can…

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Up…_down…up…down…up…down…_

"Ow…ow…ow…ow…ow…ow…" Rin mumbled as she bounced in Ah-Un's saddle.

Jaken turned to look up at Sesshoumaru. "Please, Sesshoumaru-sama may I teach her about riding in a saddle?"

Sesshoumaru looked down at his toad youkai, who had pledged his life in service to the inu youkai more than a century ago. "Go ahead. Do not injure her severely."

Jaken nodded. "Rin, give me your hand."

Rin obeyed and tried to haul Jaken up onto Ah-Un. She failed. Jaken crashed to the ground. Dazed, he forgot to move out of Ah-Un's way and so was nearly trampled by Ah-Un. Sesshoumaru picked him up and threw him onto the saddle behind Rin.

Jaken heaved a sigh. "Rin, look at me."

Rin did so. Jaken hit her on the top of the head with his staff. 

"Kyaa!" Rin cried, swinging in the saddle. She tried to push him off, and Jaken swung his staff, trying to maintain balance. The staff hit Sesshoumaru in the head.

"Jaken, I did not say you could attempt to instruct me," Sesshoumaru growled.

"My apologies, Sesshoumaru-sama!" Jaken stammered. "I did not mean to hit you!"

Sesshoumaru gave his closest thing to a scowl, and promptly hit Jaken on the head. Much laughter (from Rin) ensued.

And so, in laughter and something like love, the strange little family wanders off of our screens for a while.

Sorry kids, but— HEY! Quit that! Don't make me pull the Internet over! Spankings galore if I do!

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Hem, hem. _ANYWAY_. Sorry kids, but we're headed to the future again…THAT'S IT! I'M PULLING THE INTERNET RIGHT AROUND AND WE'RE GOING HOME!

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I'll bet some of you are just _waiting_ for those spankings. 

COMMENTS (on chapter): I like 2.0 and 2.1, but 2.2 doesn't really strike me as funny. Unless you think random people being hit on the head shortly after strange narration is funny.

The music? Catch 22's "_Giving Up, Giving In_," Reel Big Fish's _Tainted Love (Cover_), Reel Big Fish's _Scott's a Dork_, Reel Big Fish's _Beer_, and Catch 22's _Ride the Fourth Wave_.

To anybody who knows these songs, are you seeing a pattern?


	4. Chapter 3: Need A Drink

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3: Need A Drink

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3.05 [Sengoku Jidai, One Day Later] (teeny tiny prelude)

"I can't teach you, Kagome! I learned by experience!" Inuyasha had said.

"Do you want me to go to Kouga? Surely somebody in _his_ clan knows how to teach people to fight!"

"No! No! That's not it! I'll try!"

"SIT! Don't lead me around!"

"I SAID I'D TRY!"

"Oh. Sorry!"

And so Inuyasha found himself adjusting Kagome's arms to show her how to perform a move.

3.1

Kouga, once again, slunk about in the trees high above Inuyasha and Kagome. He felt something beyond anger, something close to blind rage. His mouth tried to froth, but the potion Miyouga had had Kaede brew kept his mouth from frothing and would continue doing so for another month. His mouth again tried to froth (and again to no avail) when he thought of the potion's taste.

Inuyasha, who had showed no sign of foaming at the mouth, had gotten lucky. Or perhaps, Kouga reflected, Inuyasha had been _un_lucky, because Kagome had been the one to force the potion down the (now) slightly addled wolf demon's throat.

But Inuyasha! Touching Kagome! Touching HIS Kagome! THE NERVE!

"STOP RIGHT THERE!" Kouga cried. "Inuyasha how DARE you touch my woman?!"

"**_YOUR_** WOMAN?!"

And then down came Kouga, landing on Inuyasha's head ("OW") then flipping neatly in front of Kagome. Kouga smoothly disconnected the human and hanyou. Unfortunately, Inuyasha tried to trip Kouga and partly succeeded— Kouga went reeling forward, his lips (and head) knocking against Kagome's.

Inuyasha began to foam at the mouth. Hastily he crammed his jaws together and made growling noises in the back of his throat.

Yet again, the worst possible person to view this scene walked in.

Miroku turned to look at Inuyasha. "Considering your actions last week, I would assume that you are jealous of Kagome?"

Inuyasha, whose gums had stuck together, could say nothing in his defense.

Kagome managed to recover from having her lips suddenly and violently forced against Kouga's and brought her hand against his cheek in a mighty slap. Kouga put his hand to the red mark on the offended cheek and made a whining sound.

Kagome wheeled around to face Inuyasha. "AND YOU! LEADING BOTH ME _AND_ KIKYOU ON!"

Inuyasha backed away, whimpering.

The sound of flesh striking flesh filled the clearing.

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mraw hah!


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